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186 dOCUMENTA (13) | Catalog 1/3 The Book of Books | 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts 187

Nº031 Nº032

Alexander Kluge Doug Ashford, Julie Ault,


He Has the Heartless Eyes Group Material
of One Loved above All Else AIDS Timeline
I’ve just returned from comforting my best friend, Gesine. In the quality that unnerves. What Gesine ever saw in this spoiled youth is Introduction information curated by the group from the same research are-
meantime I’m sure that she won’t kill herself. The storm has not a mystery to me. Even in this first courting hour—I was there and nas—ran close to the line. Documentary material was keyed to the

Doug Ashford
been weathered. I saw how he trashed her, then slammed the apart- unfortunately went home early—he was full and satiated, his look a timeline, as were some of the more directly pertinent artworks,
ment door behind him. He has the delicacy to continue living with “business look.” So I was convinced “I didn’t even need to ignore while other indirect and metaphoric works were not anchored to
her to avoid hotel costs. He leaves her apartment and goes about it.” But Gesine saw something else. In his blotchy face she saw what points in time.
his business, visiting his new mistress, a married woman for whom she felt, as in a mirror. At first glance, the timeline format promoted a linear reading;

& Julie Ault


Gesine has been demoted. I always thought that mothers who loved their sons sow a seed of however, once one got involved with the histories and stories and
I have to take care that my words of comfort (although I usually tenderness in them. This is then harvested by the people who meet images, cross-referencing became inevitable. AIDS Timeline’s in-
just gather her silently in my arms and put her to bed) don’t fuel these young men later. Instead, a frugal patriarchy establishes itself gredients were presented not as disparate elements or facts but as
her hopes of his returning to her in some fantastic shape. I saw the in such cases, a long line of sedentary ancestors who grasp only, a web of intertwined events that described social processes and
look in his eyes. Gesine doesn’t stand a chance. No one in the world and ask for nothing. I get the impression that sons who don’t have demonstrated the connectivity of actions and events.
can get something from him if he doesn’t want it. And he’s satiated, to fight for their mothers’ affection develop monsters inside them. Group Material’s work was primarily topical and temporal, fueled Virtually all the major social inequities that compromise de-
nourished by the devotion of women whose tribute he has been I don’t want to generalize, and yet I’m doing just that. My anger at by our personal and collective observations—and by the social ur- mocracy in the United States were reflected in that decadelong
used to since childhood. Gesine’s occupier loosens my tongue for generalizations: gencies we perceived. Our horizon was the present tense. In 1989, history of AIDS. The group’s arrangement of information posited
Strictly speaking it’s not his eyes that document his merciless- the curator of the MATRIX Gallery at the Berkeley University a history of the political and social conditions in which AIDS was
ness but his look. His eyes, on the whole, are expressionless, a bit “He has the heartless eyes / Art Museum, Larry Rinder, invited us to address the subject of not only allowed but encouraged to become a national crisis, and
dull. Precisely this lack of expression gives his look that “negative” Of one loved above all else.” AIDS after seeing our exhibition at Dia Art Foundation the year broadcast some evidential responses made in the arms of the cri-
before, “AIDS & Democracy: A Case Study.” sis. The timeline related the widespread stigmatization of people
At the time, Group Material consisted of Doug Ashford, Julie with AIDS, demonstrating the links between representation and
Ault, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Karen Ramspacher. By 1989, judgment and between representation and allocation of resources.
we had witnessed several years of the epidemic with severely in- Furthermore, it documented the impact that homophobia, racism,
1 2 adequate public response. The accumulation of AIDS-related ill- heterosexism, and sexism had on the formation of public policy.
nesses and deaths of young friends and colleagues informed our Aesthetic practice and social practice merged in AIDS Time-
daily lives. For our own edification and for public purpose, the line. The project involved layers of collaboration in and beyond
group embarked on constructing a history of the conditions that the group with both individuals and community advocacy orga-
had transformed the epidemic into a full-blown national crisis. nizations. AIDS Timeline proposed models of history writing, cu-
Along with Berkeley intern Richard Meyer, we researched ratorial method, artistic practice, and social process, as well as a
events and developments in several arenas—medical and scien- compound of temporal contexts joined together that reflected the
tific industries, governmental policies and statistics, grassroots climate of circumstance and perception, the complexity of the pe-
responses and activism within affected communities, and media riod. The exhibition sought at once to contextualize the AIDS cri-
representations of AIDS, as well as artistic responses and popu- sis and to create a context itself—a didactic exhibit environment
lar culture of the relevant period. To form the exhibition, selected that examined recent events to account for present conditions,
artifacts and documentary material from these fields were joined with the hope of influencing what was to come.
with artworks by individuals and collectives in a chronological Agency was our horizon, and history—not only that of the
structure. A thick black line bifurcated the display, marking the 1980s, but history as a continuum extending from earlier than
temporal horizon of the AIDS crisis, beginning with 1979, the 1979 and going on indefinitely. Chronology as guiding device set
year the Centers for Disease Control started tracking cases and a linear horizon and performed an anchoring purpose, acting as a
1 | Alexander Kluge writes his literary texts with deaths due to a new immune-suppressive virus, and extending focal point from which viewers’ perspectives could venture. With-
a pencil on A4 notepads. Then they are dictated.
to the then present, 1989. The increasing number of new AIDS in such a setup, the horizon is endowed with the double function
2 | “Notes” in pencil while dictating a difficult text cases and deaths each year appeared on the timeline, and text— of systematizing and releasing information. The horizon opened
188 dOCUMENTA (13) | Catalog 1/3 The Book of Books | 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts 189

views to what was above and below the timeline. It opened views reaching associations between political and cultural events that
to the larger set of conditions articulated by the arrangement of render the historical period legible.
information brought into narrative armature, to reveal the far-
190 dOCUMENTA (13) | Catalog 1/3 The Book of Books | 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts 191
192 dOCUMENTA (13) | Catalog 1/3 The Book of Books | 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts 193

Nº033

Donna Haraway
SF: Speculative Fabulation
and String Figures
Consider a fictional multiple integral equation that is a flawed trope Terrapolis is networked re-enactments for flourishing in mortal ter-
and a serious joke in an effort to picture what an intersectional—or ran living and dying.
intra-actional—theory might look like in Terrapolis.2 Think of this
formalism as the mathematics of sf. Sf is that potent material semi- Terrapolis is multispecies storytelling, multispecies worlding in
otic sign for the riches of speculative fabulation, speculative femi- sf modes.
nism, science fiction, science fact, science fantasy—and, I suggest,
string figures. In looping threads and relays of patterning, this sf Terrapolis is open, not poor in world, full of connections and net-
practice is a model for worlding. Sf must also mean “so far,” open- worked re-enactments.8
ing up what is yet-to-come in protean time’s pasts, presents, and
futures. Terrapolis is a chimera of materials, languages, histories; a mongrel
of Greek and Latin.

Ω Terrapolis is playing cat’s cradle with Isabelle Stengers’ cosmopoli-


∫ Terra [X]n = ∫∫∫∫ . . . ∫∫Terra(X1,X2,X3,X4, . . . ,Xn,t) dX1 dX2 dX3 tics, tugging at the threads of coherence in the interests of co-
dX4 . . . dXn dt = Terrapolis habitation.9
α
Terrapolis is the home of transdisciplinarities that are at risk of
X1 = stuff/physis, X2 = capacity, X3 = sociality, X4 = materiality, Xn becoming-with.
= ??
α (alpha) = not zoë, but EcoEvoDevo’s multispecies epigenesis Terrapolis is at risk of dropping threads and missing dimensions in
Ω (omega) = not bios, but recuperating terra’s pluriverse the action and passion of caring.
t = multi-scalar times, entangled times of past/present/yet-to-come,
worlding times, not container time3 Terrapolis is full of companion species—not “post-human” but
“com-post.”

Terrapolis is of and for humus, the stuff of guman, an old earthy In-
Terrapolis is a fictional integral equation, a speculative fabulation.4 do-European word for workers of the soil, not the stuff of homo,
that figure of the bright and airy sacred image of the same.
Terrapolis is an n-dimensional hyper volume; in ecological theory,
a niche space.5 Terrapolis is not a system, not even a hopeful 3rd-order or nth-
order cybernetic system; but its values are determinable, locat-
Terrapolis is a niche space for multispecies becoming-with.6 able, accountable, and open to change.

Terrapolis is a n-dimensional volume in naturecultures. Terrapolis is abstract and concrete.

Terrapolis is the semiotic material worlding of EcoEvoDevo in mul- Terrapolis is sf.


ti-scalar times and places.7

Terrapolis is the cat’s cradling set of string figures tied in intra-


action and intra-patience.

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